So, that was one noisy computer out of my relatively small office. In the same time frame our group purchased a loaner Windows laptop. Since it will be spending more time in the office than being loaned out, it has replaced the noisy and ancient 333 MHz Pentium tower that I used for checking web pages. That makes two noisy computers out of the office.

Panther shipped with an optional install of the final version of X11, an OSX native version of X Windows. Since we still have quite a few astronomers accessing our site via Netscape 4.x on Unix, I had an old Unix box on my desk as well. It’s still there, but it no longer gets turned on, as X11 is actually faster than the real thing. That’s all three noisy machines, gone. And the smaller footprints of the laptops and the Cinema Display give me much more room to randomly distribute paper on my desk...

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While I was away, my old 400 MHz G4 tower at work was replaced with a new 1.25 GHz 15" Aluminum PowerBook. I managed to squeak into the $20 upgrade price for Panther as well. My 21" ancient CRT (more...